Archaeologists

DISREGARD FOR historic sites is all too common in this age of rapid development. Homes dating to the Revolution are replaced by high-rises; the sites of important battles are more cherished by relic seekers than the general public.And so, an old Indian campsite virtually untouched by time is indeed a rare find. The way this site in Howard County has been handled should be instructive to others who may overlook the significance of such treasures.The last Indians to occupy what is now called the Elkridge site left some 500 years ago. Archaeologists have begun to comb the small piece of Patapsco Valley State Park for links to the past.

More doubt has been cast on claims that stone tools, hearths and wall paintings at a rock shelter in Brazil constitute evidence that people lived in the Americas as early as 50,000 years ago, long before the generally accepted time of 12,000 or at best 15,000 years ago.At the invitation of the European and Brazilian excavators, three archaeologists from the United States, specialists in early American settlement, inspected the rock shelter of Pedra Furada...

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - The elegant homes and gardens of 18th-century Williamsburg might have existed in a busy and crowded landscape of barns and sheds and workyards quite unlike the sedate atmosphere of the restored historic area today. Archaeologists exploring beneath the ground on the site of a proposed parking garage just outside the historic area have found evidence that a grand home and its garden existed within the same block as a stable, brick kiln, window-making shop, saw pit and other proto-industrial facilities.

SHERIDAN, Wyo. -- The oil and gas boom in the West has opened vast lands to discoveries by an unlikely group - archaeologists such as Kevin O'Dell. With crews spaced 100 feet apart, O'Dell and other archaeologists are walking thousands of acres of sagebrush highlands, valleys and hills, and they're achieving a remarkable increase in identification of prehistoric and historic sites - from those of ancient Native Americans to the homesteaders of the last...

To the surprise of archaeologists, American Indians were trashing the Millersville Landfill nearly 6,000 years ago.Anne Arundel County's prehistoric inhabitants apparently camped, hunted and fashioned tools along a small stream that once ran through what has become the county's largest trash facility.However, all they left behind was trash of their own."Typically, archaeologists only find what prehistoric people threw away," said Amy Friedlander, a project manager for a team of archaeologists who unearthed the prehistoric campsite at Millersville this spring.

A Schaefer administration official is pressing ahead with plans to move the skeletal remains of a Native American woman from the state's archaeological collection and bury them in a sealed container at a Calvert County park.Most Indian groups are against such a step. So are Maryland archaeologists.But Jacqueline H. Rogers, the Housing and Community Development secretary, says she is determined to end years of emotional wrangling over the remains of at least 80 Indians in the state's collection by interring at least one set of bones at the Jefferson Patterson Historical Park and Museum.

Local archaeologists have not only confirmed that Baltimore's Lafayette Square Park was once the stomping ground of a Civil War army barracks, but they also dug up a little-known fact about the soldiers who dwelled there: They had a knack for losing buttons. On Sunday, volunteers who joined the Baltimore Heritage and Archaeological Society of Maryland in searching for remnants at the former Union army encampment ended a three-day quest of exploring the park's history in the 19th century.

A Dallas-led team of archaeologists has concluded that humans lived in southern Chile 12,500 years ago -- more than 1,000 years earlier than most scientists had believed possible.The finding suggests that researchers may have to radically revise their ideas of how humans migrated into the New World, the scientists say."This is probably the biggest change in North American archaeology in 50 years," said Alex Barker, curator of archaeology at the Dallas Museum of Natural History. Barker coordinated an expedition last month to a site known as Monte Verde, about 500 miles south of Santiago, Chile.

George R. Hayman Jr. pointed his closed red and gold umbrella towardthe gray sky, turned to a dozen people behind him, and with a directive to "follow the umbrella," led them through an Annapolis few people know exist.The volunteer tour guide marched his pack of visitors around State Circle yesterday, down to City Dock and back up the hill to the William Paca House and Gardens, hitting 12 sites in all as part of the Historic Annapolis Foundation's 10th annual Historic Hike.Unlike previous walks, when tours focused on old taverns or a specific section of the historic city, this year's looked at what lies buried deep below ground.

"The Indians were the first to occupy the site of Annapolis," begins Elihu S. Riley's 1886 chronicle, "The Ancient City.""The records of their habitation remain in the occasional well-shapen arrow and finely-modelled tomahawk that the furrow the farmer upturns in the vicinity, or the showers of heaven wash from the earth."Add to that record the archaeologists, who nowadays systematically comb the 418 square miles of Anne Arundel County for its rich deposits of historical artifacts. Among the finds have been 13,000-year-old fluted spear points and paleo-Indian remains of the first human beings known to have lived in Maryland.